JUNE 24 2017 (The Bulletin) — Kazakh company AllurGroup has started shipping cars to Dushanbe to form a fleet of taxis for the Tajik capital. The $600,000 deal for 55 Chinese-designed JAC S3s is important as it will keep jobs at the Kostanai-based SaryarkaAvtoProm. The Kazakh car making sector has been under pressure in the current economic downturn.
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(News report from Issue No. 335, published on July 3 2017)
JUNE 14 2017 (The Bulletin) — Uzbek president Shavkat Mirziyoyev signed a decree that formalises an investment by French carmaker PSA, owner of the Peugeot and Citron brands. PSA plans to produce around 16,000 vans every year in Uzbekistan. The Uzbek car-making sector is important domestically as it is one of the few outside the oil and gas sector with foreign investors. US’ GM is a 25% stake holder in a joint-venture with Uzbekistan’s Uzavtosanoat.
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(News report from Issue No. 333, published on June 19 2017)
TASHKENT, JUNE 5 2017 (The Bulletin) — Looking to give the Uzbek car-making sector a boost, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev unveiled a series of investments and tax cuts specifically aimed at boosting production and job numbers.
The uzdaily.uz website reported that on June 1, Mr Mirziyoyev had signed into law an investment scheme worth $800m for Uzavtosanoat. It reported that it was hoped that production would jump by 300% and the number of people employ would also surge accordingly.
The Uzbek auto sector has been heavily hit by a collapse in the Russian car market. Data released in April showed that the number of cars produced in Uzbekistan had halved in 2016 to around 92,000. This year, though, there are signs that the the Uzbek car making sector is beginning to rebound.
French carmaker PSA, which owns the Peugeot and Citron brands, has signed a deal to assemble 16,000 cars in Uzbekistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 332, published on June 12 2017)
MAY 29 2017 (The Bulletin) — Car imports from Russia into Kazakhstan dropped by 11% in the first quarter of the year to 4,700 cars, media reported. Reports said the drop in Russian car imports was mainly due to a sharp rise in prices linked to a drop in the value of the Kazakh tenge. In the first quarter of 2014, Kazakhstan imported 32,400 cars from Russia.
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(News report from Issue No. 331, published on June 5 2017)
JUNE 2 2017 (The Bulletin) — GM Uzbekistan, a joint-venture between the US’ GM and state- owned Uzavtosanoat, started selling its cars in Uzbek soum for the first time, Reuters reported, rolling back a Karimov-era policy that insisted that the cars were sold in US dollars. Karimov was Uzbek president from 1991 until his death in September 2016. His successor, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, has promised to liberalise Uzbekistan’s economy. Karimov had wanted cars sold in soum in order to bring more foreign currency into the country.
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(News report from Issue No. 331, published on June 5 2017)
MAY 22 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Italy-based bus maker Iveco shipped 210 buses to Astana, part of a programme to upgrade the city’s fleet ahead of EXPO-2017. Iveco said that the new buses will join 358 Iveco buses already operating in Astana. The buses are manufactured at a factory in France and partly re-assembled at a plant in Kostanay, north Kazakhstan. EXPO- 2017 is giving the Kazakh economy a boost.
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(News report from Issue No. 330, published on May 28 2017)
MAY 16 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — French car producer PSA, the maker of Peugeot and Citroen cars, signed a deal with Uzbekistan’s state-owned Uzavtosanoat to set up a factory in the Free Industrial Zone of Jizzakh, media reported. The plan is to produce light commercial vehicles for the Uzbek and wider Central Asia markets. For Uzbekistan, attracting investment from PSA is a major success. It already operates a JV with the US’ GM. The car market, though, has slumped over the last few years as the economies in Central Asia and Russia, a major market, have dipped.
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(News report from Issue No. 329, published on May 20 2017)
APRIL 27 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Car production in Uzbekistan halved in 2016, state-owned Uzavtoprom said, highlighting the problems that one of the country’s most high- profile industries is facing.
Data on car production in Uzbekistan, an important employer around the city of Andijan in the Ferghana Valley, is tightly controlled and for the state’s main car producer to admit that there is a problem means that it is nervous about its future.
Last year the GM Uzbekistan joint venture with US’s GM which is based at the Andijan plant produced 88,200 cars out of total Uzbek car production of 92,625.
There was no comment on the press release, although it was widely cited across Uzbek media.
Last year was a decidedly tough year for the Uzbek car industry. It is reliant for much of its sales on Russia which has been dealing with a recession triggered by a fall in energy prices and by Western imposed sanctions. Sales figures repeatedly reported a drop in demand of around 37%.
GM Uzbekistan also had problems with its distributors in Uzbekistan, with the life.ru website reporting in May 2016 that it may be forced to stop exports to Russia altogether because of the bankruptcy of its partner in the Voronezh region.
Since then, GM Uzbekistan has said that it is starting to export cars to both Tajikistan and Belarus, an apparent attempt to reduce its over- reliance on Russia for its market.
And there was also a corruption scandal that enveloped its top management. This included Tokhirjon Jalilov, who was arrested and sacked as chairman of GM Uzbekistan after allegedly being involved in a scam to sell cars to neighbouring Kazakhstan to a proxy company and then re-importing them back to Uzbekistan where they were sold to consumers.
The accusation was that the company’s management pocketed the difference.
GM owns 25% of GM Uzbekistan and Uzavtoprom owns 75%.
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(News report from Issue No. 326, published on April 28 2017)
APRIL 12 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Chinese investment company SMS agreed to buy a 51% stake in Kazakh car-maker Allur, the company said in a press release. The press release didn’t say how much SMS was going to pay for its stake or when the transaction would take place. Allur is one of the biggest car- makers in Kazakhstan and owns stakes in the SaryarkaAvtoProm and Agromash factories. Kazakhstan’s car manufacturing sector has been hard hit by the economic slowdown.
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(News report from Issue No. 325, published on April 17 2017)f
APRIL 17 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Car manufacturers in Kazakhstan sold 7,569 new cars in the first quarter of the year, a drop of 28.2% on the same period in 2016, Kazakhstan’s Union of Automotive Industry Enterprises, KazAvtoProm, said in a press release. The data will be a blow to the government which has been saying that a sharp economic downturn since mid-2014 has now been reversed.
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(News report from Issue No. 325, published on April 17 2017)
